Automatic beverage brewing devices for brewing tea have heretofore been no more than automatic drip coffee makers in which tea is used instead of coffee. Water drawn from a water reservoir is heated and dripped over tea leaves held in a basket to produce tea in a carafe or receptacle. A controlled steeping period is required to extract a maximum amount of flavor from the tea leaves. Steeping requires that the tea leaves be submerged in a volume of water heated over a period of time to a temperature at which time the tea is ready to be served. Automatic brewing devices of the prior art which operate on the principle of dripping heated water through a basket do not provide a controlled temperature-dependent steeping period.
Automatic brewing devices also typically have separate reservoirs or chambers for water, brewing, and receiving the brewed beverage. Multiple chambers, combined with the requirement to transport liquid between the chambers, complicates the design and operation of such devices and increases costs and the likelihood of operational failure.
The present invention overcomes these and other disadvantages of prior art brewing devices for brewing tea or the like by a steeping process.